The Once and Future King. F. H. Buckley

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СКАЧАТЬ under the Articles had broken down. Important decisions were left unmade, and it was increasingly difficult to assemble a quorum in Congress. Whatever government might exist, said Alexander Hamilton, it was “dissolving or already dissolved.”⁴ At a critical moment, when the delegates seemed hopelessly divided, the country’s leading deist, Benjamin Franklin, suggested that they appoint a chaplain and pray for guidance.⁵ Had the Convention adjourned at that point, the country might easily have broken apart.⁶ Its fate, recalled Gouverneur Morris, hung by a hair.⁷

      It was also difficult to raise funds for investment projects because the states had treated creditors shabbily, and the country was in a depression. “In every point of view,” wrote Madison in 1785, “the trade of this Country is in a deplorable Condition.”⁸ Perhaps things were not quite so desperate as that,⁹ but what the delegates saw when they looked about were states with devalued currencies and massive deficits. So deep was the crisis, so profound the financial problems, and so great the unwillingness of politicians to deal with them, that the economic difficulties were every bit as bad as those facing America today.

      The problem, the Framers thought, came from the mercenary new men who now inhabited the statehouses in America. A good part of the colonial elite, especially from the northern states, had been exiled by the Revolution; many of those who were left served as delegates at the Philadelphia Convention or in the Continental Congress in New York. That left what the delegates saw as a second string of ill-educated populists to serve in the state legislatures.¹⁰ What would be needed, some thought, was a strong national government to trump them and correct these ills.

      Very early in the Convention the delegates made several procedural decisions that importantly affected the outcome. On May 25, the first day, they unanimously elected Washington as its president, and appointed Virginia’s George Wythe, America’s first law professor, to chair a committee to draft the rules of procedure. Adopted on May 28, the rules impressed upon the delegates the solemnity of their undertaking. A delegate wishing to speak was asked to stand and address the president; and while one delegate was speaking the other delegates were not to read a book or speak to each other. When the meeting was over, the delegates were to stand until the president left the room.

      Crucially, the delegates agreed that votes would be taken by state, with a majority of states deciding an issue, and a majority of delegates within each state deciding how the state would vote. A quorum was set at seven states, so that four states might in theory decide an issue. Nationalists from the relatively populous Pennsylvania delegation objected to giving an equal voice to small-state delegations, but were persuaded by the Virginians that this was the only way to get everyone on board.¹¹ After this, many of the most contentious issues at the Convention were foreordained. Because small states outnumbered large states, states’ rights would be protected. And because issues were decided by majority vote, and not the unanimity that would have been needed to amend the Articles of Confederation, there was likely going to be a deal.

      The delegates also decided to hold their deliberations in Committee of the Whole, which freed them from most parliamentary rules. This permitted them to return to subjects previously discussed, and undo prior resolutions. And so they came back again and again to the same question, changing their minds back and forth on how to select a president, and dropping long prepared speeches into the debates. They decided to keep their deliberations secret, and for the most part adhered to this. The only time Washington was heard to express anger was when he discovered that a set of Convention notes had been left on the floor for anyone to pick up. He kept silent about this until the end of the session, but then stood up and, like a stern headmaster, reminded everyone of the rule of confidentiality. “I know not whose paper it is,” he said, “but there it is” (throwing it down on the table), “let him who owns it take it.” Washington bowed, took up his hat, and strode from the room “with a dignity so severe that every Person seemed alarmed.”¹² No one had the courage to claim the notes.

      To these procedural rules might be added a social convention that promoted amity and cooperation. Philadelphia was a smallish town of forty thousand people, and the delegates could not help but see each other socially at their homes and clubs. They might gather around the mulberry tree in Franklin’s yard, or dine at the India Queen inn, the Convention’s unofficial club, where many of them stayed. On Sundays they took trips together to visit Valley Forge or Bartram’s Garden. At their request, Washington might join them for dinner, to elevate the tone. Many of the delegates knew each other from past congresses, or from the Revolutionary Army. Those who had been strangers quickly fell in with each other to cut the deals that kept the Convention from falling apart.

       THE DELEGATES

      Virginia led the way in planning for the Convention. It appointed a delegation that included George Wythe, George Mason, James Madison, and George Washington. Mason was the author of the June 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, from which much of the Declaration of Independence had been cribbed. Washington was the Indispensible Man, without whom the Revolution would have failed. Having retired to Mount Vernon at a time when he might easily have assumed a dictatorship over the country, he was a world figure, regarded by his countrymen with awe.

      Besides the prominent Virginians, the delegates included John Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris, and James Wilson. When he learned their names, Jefferson described them as “demigods” in a letter to John Adams.¹³ They included sixteen lawyers, four judges, seven politicians, four planters, and two physicians.¹⁴ Twenty-nine of them had undergraduate degrees, including nine from Princeton, four each from Yale and William and Mary, and three each from Harvard and King’s College (Columbia). Three had attended college in Great Britain, at Oxford, St. Andrews, and Glasgow. Six had been trained at the Inns of Court in London.¹⁵ Most would have been seen as the natural aristocrats of American society, and half were on Mrs. John Jay’s dinner invitation list, which was the social register of the time.¹⁶

      That said, some of the more prominent delegates took little part in the proceedings. Wythe’s wife took ill and died, and he left after a week. Franklin was 81 years old, and often had to be carried on a litter the three blocks from his home to the Convention, by prisoners from the local jail. His speeches were read for him, and he seldom spoke closely on an issue. As the Convention’s elder statesman, his primary concern was to smooth over disputes and produce compromises, and this he did most effectively; but since he rowed with muffled oars, most historians have discounted his contributions. Hamilton was absent for much of the Convention and did himself no favors by freely advancing his strong conservative views. He wanted a strong national government, loathed democracy, and saw little difference between it and the kind of republic the delegates were considering. It was “pork still, with a little change of the sauce,” New York’s Robert Yates heard him say.¹⁷

      Many of the delegates are deservedly obscure today. Half of them failed to make a contribution to the discussion, and some absented themselves from Philadelphia for long periods. Forrest McDonald described a group of dirt farmers, religious crackpots, and impecunious bootlickers straggling into town to represent their states.¹⁸ “You may have been taught to respect the characters of the members of the late Convention,” said George Mason.

       You may have supposed they were an assemblage of great men. There is nothing less true. From [New England] there were knaves and fools and from the states southward of Virginia they were a parcel of coxcombs and from the middle states office hunters not a few. ¹⁹

      One delegate, it seems, sold information about the proceedings to British agents.²⁰

      Fortunately, the politicians most opposed to tampering with the Articles stayed away from the Convention. Backwoods populists such as William Findley refused to travel to Philadelphia when told they wouldn’t be reimbursed for their expenses. Radical demagogues such as John Hancock and Patrick Henry also СКАЧАТЬ